The Many Minds of Eru Lee
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: After his failed attack on the Potters, Tom Riddle finds himself in a strange land populated by the omnipresent, childish, doppelganger of Lily Evans and finds himself mostly unnerved, irritated, and very confused. Side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds"


**Author's Note: Warnings here are that this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and as such, if you haven't read at least ten or so chapters in, you'll be pretty damn confused about what's going on. So, yes, keep that in mind.**

* * *

" _I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."_

Phillip K. Dick, Ubik

* * *

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

The dark lord Voldemort opened his eyes, curiously heavy as if they had been closed for years, and found himself staring not at the infant Eleanor Lily Potter or her deceased mother sprawled out on the floor, her eyes glazed and accusing. Instead, at first blurred and then startling in focus, was a young girl who looked almost like Lily Evans.

It was as if someone had taken a twelve or thirteen-year-old Lily Evans and further sculpted her features, lit bright electric lights from behind her eyes, and had taken everything soft from her and removed it leaving something wild and lethal in its place.

She was dressed in unfamiliar, oriental, clothing. A wide brimmed hat, a white cloak, and an overflowing red scarf wrapped around her neck. With the wooden sandals strapped to her feet she looked as if she could belong in a strange oriental painting, in spite of curling red hair and those bright green eyes.

Surrounding them were not the quiet darkened hallways of Godric's Hollow, the blinking loving pictures of the young Potter family but instead a great never ending darkness interrupted by soft golden roots leading to the great pillar of light that served as the trunk of an overwhelmingly large tree.

And instead of that stark cold that comes in the aftermath of the killing curse there was the soft scent of unrecognizable fruit and a warm breeze that rustled the leaves far above him.

"…I had forgotten that there were such beautiful things in the world." the girl stared up, past him, and in her eyes something truly profound and tragic was reflected though for the life of him he could not imagine what it could be.

He felt off. As if he was not inside of his body, but instead viewing it from the outside, the way one might in a particularly vivid dream. Everything was tilted sideways, slipping further and further from his grasp, and he found that speech escaped him entirely and all he could do was watch, stare, and listen.

And the girl turned to him with her strange, too green, eyes and all at once he thought they were not eyes at all. Instead, they were windows, behind which lay Godric's Hollow and that last killing curse, and that at her slightest whim they might open and that sickly light would flood out towards him.

On seeing him her expression changed, grew staler, harder, and whatever profound sorrow had been there dripped away until only steel remained in her eyes. She took his hand in hers, her own hand seeming to burn with trapped starlight, and placed a silver canister inside of his palm.

A worn label on the side read the word, "Ubik"

She then withdrew her hand, fixed him with an odd hesitant, look, and said, "I don't know why you're here but… You'll need this."

Then, as if something was pulling him backwards, he found himself flung far from her into the great dark beyond the tree, watching as she became little more than a white speck lost amid the golden glow of the roots and the utter darkness that existed outside of them.

(And overhead, unseen behind the leaves of the tree, was the great shell of the moon where a goddess of war had once been imprisoned.)

* * *

He couldn't remember the last time he had heard a harmonica. Thankfully the instrument had never caught on in the wizarding world, remained a purely muggle phenomenon, but none the less he could recognize that obnoxious wheezing noise from somewhere in his distant childhood.

He opened his eyes, realizing his surroundings had changed once again, where the great tree and golden roots had been there was now a cramped room, far too small for someone his height, with a single electric light dangling above.

Next to him, breathing into a dented harmonica, was a younger version of the girl by the tree.

Only this girl wasn't dressed in unfamiliar oriental garb, instead wearing a ratty, poppy red sweater, worn faded shorts and looking instead like any other impoverished English little girl might look.

He looked down into his own hand and saw that where would have preferred his wand to be was the mysterious spray can labeled 'Ubik'

Wonderful.

He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and willed his muddled thoughts into some semblance of order.

First, where was he? Well, first he had been by a tree, a tree larger than any he had ever heard of, and now he was in what looked like a cupboard sitting on a mattress. No, his surroundings weren't important, it was the girl, the girl was what remained consistent.

(There was something about her, some familiar aspect of her, that terrified him.)

He glanced at her, she appeared to be ignoring him which was all well and good, and again thought to himself how much she looked like Lily Potter. She had the same coloring, perhaps a little paler, thinner, her eyes brighter, and her hair far thicker and curlier but all the same the two could be sisters.

Only, instead of twelve the girl was now closer to five or six, her knees too knobby for her height and frame and looking more like one of the orphans during his own childhood than she had any right to.

Meanwhile, she kept dutifully playing some unrecognizable blues on the harmonica.

"Would you please stop that." He said, and to his surprise she did. She lowered the instrument and looked at him idly out of those unnerving eyes of her.

"You're not supposed to be here." She finally said, with a sort of musing expression, not as if this offended her but like it was a common fact.

"Believe me, little girl, I would prefer not to be here." But it didn't appear as if he had much of a choice, this was… this was deep magic, old magic, magic that went far beyond humanity and souls to something much more dangerous. Something few ever touched.

"That's too bad, you seem to be stuck."

"Oh, and why am I stuck?" He asked, feeling caught on that last word, such a casual undignified word. Stuck, like the soles of his shoes had been glued to the floor, rather than something more permanent or at least direr like imprisoned.

"Don't ask me, Lenin, you're the one who lodged yourself in here in the first place." The girl scoffed, before picking the harmonica up once again and continuing the blues progression where she had left off.

"Wait, what do you mean I lodged myself in here?"

She sighed, dropped the harmonica once again, "I mean, here I was, minding my own business. Not really doing anything yet, and you shove yourself in here, ruining everything, causing it to all go to hell, and now you have the nerve to say you want out."

She then observed him for a moment with a sharper look, a look that shouldn't even belong to the twelve-year-old version, let alone this too precocious younger girl, "Of course, that's sort of what you do, isn't it Lenin? It's your raison d'être and all that. What would a wizard named Lenin be without incessant revolution?"

He had a feeling they weren't talking about this cupboard, which he had been flung into, but instead something much more perilous. Something he really didn't want to talk about with anyone let alone a small unfamiliar girl. All the same though, he couldn't help but glare at the girl, and then turn his attention to the door.

Reaching over with a hand, he moved the doorknob, and was unsurprised to find it locked. Perhaps more surprising, and alarming, was that even with a wandless unlocking spell the door remained stuck fast.

"Try the ubik."

He stopped, looked back over at the girl, who wasn't even looking at him but instead staring straight ahead at the wall.

"The ubik?"

"The spray can, if you want to leave, try the ubik."

He brought the can up in front of him, read that worn label again, and frowned, "What exactly is… ubik?"

"What isn't ubik?" The girl asked in return, as if this was some sort of pun, "But seriously, that's kind of what the stuff is for."

"And I simply spray it on the door?"

The girl shrugged, "Or don't and stay in the cupboard beneath the stairs, it's your choice. Personally, though, I'd use it."

He frowned, almost retorted sharply back, before deciding it wasn't worth it. Honestly though, when he got back to England he was going to do his best to pretend this all never happened. He brought the spray to the door, pressed down on the small nozzle, and watched as a strange silver spray misted before him.

Only, instead of painting the door silver when the spray touched it the door expanded, grew into a great wooden gate, complete with two men standing guard at the entrance. The cupboard melted away along with the door, the girl with it, and when he turned to look behind him there was instead a wooded path stretching out into the horizon.

All at once, standing there in the middle of the street like an idiot, he felt all that rage and embarrassment that should have been present earlier overtake him. This wasn't where he was supposed to be, wasn't where he even wanted to be, what had happened to Godric's Hollow, to Eleanor Lily Potter, what had happened to England?

What the hell could have possibly gone wrong to land him…

Wherever he was.

At least this time the girl, Lily Evans' younger doppelganger, was absent. Or perhaps this was worse, without her this landscape seemed surreal, unnerving, a false play at reality that only just managed to be convincing.

Shaking these thoughts he slowly walked through the gate, past the inattentive guards, and into the village itself.

As soon as he did so there was a great murmuring, unintelligible foreign conversations surrounded him, and people brushed past him without any regard for his presence. And the people, the people were a bizarre mix of culture, from modern muggle cutoff shorts and tee-shirts to the traditional garb of samurai they wandered through the streets going this way and that, perfectly oblivious to his own confusion.

He kept walking, his path seemingly set for him by the clarity of those around him. As he walked he noted the signs, written in unfamiliar characters, the calligraphy painted by hand rather than printed via a muggle machine. He also noted, distantly, that there was not a single wand in hand of these people but still a strong scent of magic to the very air itself.

He fingered the spray can absently, the silver too cold in his hand, and wondered just what it was he was supposed to do here.

Then all at once, a small child stepped into the picture, except this one was new. Instead of the familiar red headed girl with her piercing eyes this one was a boy with shockingly blonde hair. He was twelve or thirteen, dressed in clothing looked as if it was designed for athletics, wooden sandals on his feet, and a bright metallic headband on his forehead.

The boy turned towards him, his eyes a pale blue a shade similar to Tom Marvolo Riddle's, and he offered him a slow smile and then…

Then everything went white.

* * *

And he was back inside of that cramped cupboard with the girl and her goddamned harmonica.

Well, his day was certainly going well. It almost made him want to regret being proactive in halting that prophecy, almost.

"That was not what I was hoping for, when I left this cupboard."

The girl cracked an eye open, stopped playing momentarily, "Oh? And just what were you expecting?"

"To leave, obviously."

"Well, such things are easier said than done, comrade Lenin. After all, how can you go anywhere else if you have no idea where you are?"

"Don't call me that." It was almost automatic, a knee-jerk surreal response to something he had never expected anyone to call him. Something dragged from the vaults of his memory, in that box labeled so dutifully 'muggle', and 'foreign muggle' at that.

"Picky, picky, if you forsake your own name you shouldn't be so picky with whichever one finds you. Besides, what's in a name? Tis neither hand nor foot nor any other part of a man…"

"Don't patronize me!"

The girl paused, took in the seriousness of his tone, and the gleaming of his eyes, and then shrugged once again as if the wrath of Voldemort meant little to her, "Too bad for you, comrade, I don't think you've earned the right to complain. After all, you're the one who put yourself into this mess in the first place. Given that you think you would be grateful to be anywhere at all."

"Regardless, I am anything but grateful."

She seemed to find that amusing, and although he felt his own magic restless beneath his skin, she seemed to hold greater power over their surroundings and remained immune to his ire.

"Well, that's not my problem, is it?"

The girl seemed more than content to leave it at that, began resuming to play on the harmonica, that same blues progression from earlier. Unfortunately, this continued to leave him very much in the dark confronting his worn and tattered pride.

What was left of his dignity demanded he leave again, tear his way through this… this illusion, and return to Godric's Hollow pretending none of it had happened. However, his pride was rarely a truly useful thing and in times of desperation it was best for his pragmatism to take over.

He ground out the question, through gritted teeth, feeling him tear it from his mind for even having to ask this bizarre girl, "Who are you and where exactly am I?"

The girl stopped playing and finally caused the harmonica to disappear, somehow without hand movements or a wand. All at once, she transformed into her older, adolescent self, and as she did so whatever soft youth there had been in her features dripped away leaving something too sharp in its place.

A child that only wore the thin guise of being a child.

"I have many names and no names at all. I am all that is but never what isn't. I am Death that destroys all that is and ever was but I am also Life which reaps it. I am Time and I am Dreaming. I am Eleanor Lily Potter but before her I am Eru Lee."

He focused not on this overly poetic speech but instead that last confession, that second to last name, "Eleanor Lily Potter…"

The girl offered him a sly, jagged, grin, as if he had said exactly what she had expected, but continued on regardless, "As for where you are, you are in my kingdom, Lenin. Trapped in the layers of my mind, stuck somewhere between here and there and everywhere in between. Not close to the center, but also not quite close enough to the edge."

"Are you saying, are you saying I'm inside of your mind? Of Eleanor Lily Potter's mind?"

He wasn't sure how that could be possible, how that could have happened, but never the less it explained at least some of the strangeness of his surroundings as well as the girl, this omnipresent girl herself. But all the same, all the same he was more unnerved than he could have remember being. More afraid than he had been in the orphanage or as a child. This was a deep, sickly, adult fear that grew like barbed vines from his stomach to his throat.

"If you want to be pedantic, then sure, why not?" She scoffed, then shrugged as if this was all semantics, "Of course, the thing about reality is, if you know how fast you're going then you can't have any bloody idea where you are."

Seeing his non-plussed expression she offhandedly explained, "Heisenberg principle. Of course, there's also the more common Schrödinger and his cat if you want to know all about how you can't have any idea where and what you are in any given moment, but that's just beating a dead horse, or a possibly dead or alive cat if you like."

What an obnoxious answer, had he been anywhere else, had he been in his right mind, he might very well have let his temper reign him but as it was he was willing to put it aside long enough to ask, "And yet you are Eleanor Lily Potter?"

Her eyebrows raised, dubiously, and said in a rather imperious tone, "I can be, on Tuesdays perhaps. I don't prefer to be, honestly, if I'm playing the human game I'd much rather be Eru Lee."

"And just what is Eru Lee?"

"What I choose to be, when it suits me."

He grimaced, "You're very fond of cryptic answers, for a child."

"My answers are perfectly transparent, good sir, you're just not reading them the correct way." She scoffed, looking as insulted as he himself felt, and how terrible was it that he was not panicked, not truly angry, but just insulted and irritated as if these were the only emotions he could truly summon for himself.

As if everything else was missing, only tattered remembrances of it left behind.

"Perhaps you can be less cryptic with this, how do I leave this place?"

"Oh, one never truly leaves, good Lenin. One merely is granted the illusion of leaving."

He really was on the verge of strangling this little girl, he didn't think he'd ever done that before, strangled a girl out of sheer aggravation. But, then there was a first time for everything.

"I am reality, Lenin. I am the great illusion that you persist in calling the world." She said and then pointed to the spray can, "I am ubik itself. Any attempt to leave this place will eventually bring you back here, to me, because to be anywhere at all is to be here. To be here is to exist, and so to leave you must be removed from existence."

Feeling rather contrary and a bit put out he asked, "And if I choose to be removed from existence?"

The girl grimaced and actually shuddered, "Choosing implies existence, so… No, just… Don't go there, Lenin. Let's not bring the Rabbit into this."

Instead of explaining who or what the rabbit was, the girl sighed, and waved her hand, "Besides, you're already being 'pulled out', if you want to call it that. Tobirama Senju has discovered your presence and is quite alarmed by the idea of an English _fuinjustu_ master."

"Pulled out?"

She nodded at him, "Sure, the honorable second shadow of fire, Tobirama Senju, has taken a pair of metaphorical plyers and is ripping you out as we speak. It's why you're here, why you're so… active."

He could hardly tell if this was the case, he felt unnerved but there was no tug, no sense of himself being removed, but all the same he was almost relieved to hear that he would be… elsewhere soon even if it was nowhere he'd ever heard of.

"And if I choose not to believe you?"

"Then don't, it's hardly my problem." The girl then flailed her hands, a strange extravagant gesture, then added, "Of course, there's a lot that's not really my problem and yet I end up dealing with it anyways. You know, I never knew that being a person would be so difficult, or confusing, or difficult. I swear, if it wasn't for Namikaze Minato…"

"What?"

The girl motioned to the wall of the cupboard, and where dark wood had been there was now the image of the boy from the street, smiling back at them, "Namikaze Minato, the best and brightest of us all. Also my best friend, that's the most important part."

He eyed the image of the boy dubiously, his eyes sliding towards the girl, and couldn't help but wonder why this was his problem, "…Your best friend."

The girl smiled softly, some of the edge removing itself from her features, "It was like a single star being born in eternal darkness, a stray seed of the shinju tree, and he burned so brightly in my fingertips. This one, small, insignificant man who had slaughtered, loved, and sacrificed for the survival of his people in spite of despair and betrayal beyond measure."

The image of the boy flickered, then disappeared, "You don't meet someone like that every day."

"You don't say?"

She offered him a baleful glance, "I do say, Lenin. How many truly valiant people have you met in your life?"

He hemmed and hawed, "Well, I'm sure the Order of the Phoenix consider themselves quite righteous."

"Don't devil's advocate me, Lenin. I know you don't really believe in it. And I know why, too. You've never really seen it, not from Dumbledore, not even from the young Potter family you just massacred, true righteousness is hard to come by. But regardless, it does exist, and he has it."

He gave her a rather doubtful expression, to which she pouted in response, and simply said, "Oh, I don't have to explain myself to the likes of you."

To the likes of him, and just what were the likes of Lord Voldemort?

Irrationally that bothered him, more than any opinion had in a long time, as if he needed this girl's, the supposed Eleanor Lily Potter's approval, or more her admiration and to not have it, to be pushed to the side for some adolescent boy was infuriating.

He must be dreaming, it was the only explanation for this surreal world where he himself seemed so passive, so willing to talk and question and do nothing but feel unnerved and frustrated. He must be dreaming, because if he wasn't dreaming…

The girl and the cupboard disappeared, an overwhelming flat darkness took its place, and when he opened his eyes it was to a small room and a one-way mirror.

* * *

 **Author's Note: So, I guess this is a prelude to not quite Wizard Lenin getting himself stuck in Tobirama's seal. Things in Lee's brain are pretty whacky. Anyways, written for the 1000th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by Lunaliceazreal who asked for a Tom/Lee centric story with elements of Philip K. Dick's novel "Ubik". And yes, for those of you who read a lot of what I write, I totally stole that in October, but regardless I do highly recommend that novel. Because reality warping spray cans, what more can you want out of science fiction?**

 **Also, can you believe that a spin off fic of a ridiculously AU fanfiction has managed to get 1000 reviews? I can't, at all. Really.**

 **Anyways, thanks to readers, you all are great. Reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto**


End file.
